Rise of Civilizations Minamoto No Yoshitsune Review / Overview

Today, it’s time to talk about legendary commander Minamoto No Yoshitsune in Rise of Civilizations. I’m going to share all the details you need to know about him in my review and overview, also sharing thoughts on his development and what to do to get the most out of him.

Minamoto is one of the best commanders in RoC as he can easily fight Barbarians with added strength, but also face other players in PvP with added bonuses. He’s not as amazing as a support commander – but if you have all his skills unlocked, he’s better than nothing. Here’s Minamoto:

He is a Legendary commander – which means, in theory, that he’s harder to skill up since statues are more difficult to get, but at the moment of writing this article, he’s also part of all the in-game events, so you end up being rewarded with a lot of Minamoto statues. This means that you can build him up faster, and as a Legendary, that’s a massive boost!

Minamoto Skills

Minamoto No Yoshitsune has three traits in Rise of Civilizations: Nuker (meaning that his active skill is very powerful), Jungler (making him great against barbarians) and Cavalry (meaning that he’s a great cavalry leader).

UPDATE: Things have been changed a bit following a recent update. If you’re curious to find out more and how to level him up to get the most from him, check out my Minamoto build here.

Here are the details you need about his skills:

Kyohachiryu School: A really powerful skill that, once cast, deals direct damage and has a 50% chance to deal additional damage for the next 2 seconds.

The damage dealt starts with a massive 600 points and can go up to 1,400 points at level 5, while the additional damage factor starts at 200 and goes all the way up to 600 at max level. Great damage dealer!

Trial in Kurama-dera: A cavalry-focused skill that increases march speed and attack. This starts with an increase of 3% in marching speed and goes all the way to 10% at level 5. The cavalry attack bonus is great from the beginning, at 10%, increasing gradually to 20% at level 5.

This is a really good skill to have, especially if you want to specialize the commander in marching with Cavalry only. Which is, actually, what you should do.

Master of Kendo: Increases damage dealt to barbarians, starting from 10% extra damage at level 1 and going all the way to 50% extra damage. Combine this with the Cavalry bonus and you have a massive Barbarian destroyer on your hands!

God of War: Troops’ normal attack has a 10% chance of increasing a percentage of the damage taken by the target for the next 3 seconds. This skill can only trigger every 5 seconds and starts at 10% and goes all the way to 30%.

Minamoto’s talents

Best focus here is obviously the Cavalry talent tree, starting with Cavalry Attack and going on to unlock all Talents there.

So definitely don’t go the route I’ve taken in the screenshot above – a rookie’s mistake that I made as I unlocked him before knowing much about the game and talents and how to deal with them.

Specialize Minamoto on cavalry only, load him with cavalry units only and see your enemies crash and burn!

Minamoto closing thoughts

This commander is extremely easy to farm – at least at the moment of writing this article. He’s the commander used in most of the events, so if you make purchases in the game or complete some of the events, you get additional statues for him. This means that it’s one of the easiest Legendaries to skill up multiple times, especially if you’re ready to pay some real life currency.

As a result, he can prove to be extremely useful as a long term commander for both fighting barbarians, as well as other players. Since he also has that skill against barbarians, it means that it’s a wasted space for PvP boosting, but since you can easily skill him up, it compensates.

So if you manage to unlock him early on and take advantage of all the offers to skill him up madly (and fast), definitely go for it. He’s a good commander anyway, but with the extra boost, he does get in front of others.